MF2006: Monome

The people from the Monome project are out in full force at the Faire. They’ve got five of the 8×8 pads hooked up for people to play with. The first two pictured above actually work together as a 16 step loop system. There’s also one hooked up as a mixer and another as a drum machine. The fifth one is showing pixelated video from an iSight. The box is really well built. The $500 price point has shocked a lot of people, but it’s really unavoidable since they’re only doing a 200 device run. Something I hadn’t realized before is that the buttons are unique to the device, not off the shelf parts. The button is really a rubber cap that sits over the LED and has a conductive ring at the base. I hope they post a schematic for their 8×8 matrix controller so that anyone could build one. Here are a few more pictures: one, two, three.

Profit? If those are really custom buttons and the case a custom plastic mold (is it plastic?) I doubt their numbers are far off. 12,800 buttons is a _REALLY_ short run for injection molding, with die costs in the thousands usually even for small parts. A custom contact memmbrane isn’t so great cost wise, either. Now, toss in the custom costs of a case of only 200 per die, and I wouldn’t doubt at the very least 60% of the costs for these are tied up in dies that may never be used again.

If you aren’t a musician you probably would find it useless. If you use Ableton Live, there is a lot of things you can do with it. Not sure if you know what you’re talking about. Here’s a video for the doubters.

you’ve mentioned it: it’s a lighting keyboard sending midi-data on an usb connection. simple one. But the most interesting part (since it’s such an easy piece of tech) is: has anyone a ikea-like description to do a rebuild??? And is it possible to make a rebuild responsing on the same software here: ?http://monome.org/index.php?m=resource

I’m far from any knowledge on hardware stuff but so eager to do a rebuild

If you want to try to DIY this, get the cheapest possible switch interface that has 100+ inputs – a keyboard controller. Find any old keyboard and rip it apart, then simply solder your switches directly to the circuit. This will cost $0 to $8 (for a cheap new keyboard). Repeat settings, etc can be controlled in software. As a bonus, it also has 3 outputs (Scroll lock, key lock and num lock). As for the leds, 35 line output led drivers can be had for around US$2.80 each. One of these with line scanning can easily drive an 8×8 matrix (in fact one can drive up to a 16×16 matrix). Do a search for M5451.

actually a keyboard doesnt work as it locks up after say 6 keypresses at the same time.. you want to be able to play with the full 10 fingers.. but at http://www.ucapps.de we are working on a monome clone.. however its completely diy.. also if you want something a bit cheaper.. you can go for the c64 controller we are developing.. also completely diy.. check it out..